Organizations

Question everything. Question everyone. Question it all. Anything that comes across your senses can be faked. A person may be exactly who they say, but may not. The $1000.00 coat looks nicer, classier, better tailored than the $100.00, but it could be a knock-off. Your neighbor may be a successful business person or a drug dealer. It’s not easy to tell sometimes.

If you want to see truth like you say you want to, you must bypass the easy stuff. The cover story. All the mind Jedi tricks that people play are distractions. Don’t be distracted. Retrain your thinking. How? Notice the story they tell you. Look at it then look again. Listen to the skeptics. Take courses in critical thinking. Be smart and use the scientific method. The story is the hypothesis. They say they work at a bank. What type of car do they drive? How do they dress? House? Children? is their lifestyle in the salary range of a loan officer or the president? What type of friends do they have? Check out the salary of bankers in your state. In other words, do the ingredients in this person’s life add up to who they say they are?

There are three main questions to ask if you want to exercise skepticism.

Who is making claim?

What’s the context?

What is the quality of the evidence?

I wanted to share some resources for those who want to dabble in skepticism.

Have you ever been scammed? Do you know the feeling when the bottom you thought was sure and solid, fell out? Or the opposite, the ground looked shaky or bumpy, but was smooth? I’m watching a show that a scam was just played and the best part was that it was played on the scam artist. The duped scam artist only had one kidney and was terrified of it failing so they faked his tests to make it seem it was failing. He believed. He knew for sure he was dying. That’s when he became desperate. Third world country transplants are shady and this guy flew across the world to get a healthy kidney. But there was no kidney, only the scam.

It reminds me of the old cartoons. Roadrunner stops at the edge of the cliff and Wile E Coyote runs past and realizes suddenly he’s standing on air. He looks down, panic in his eyes, then falls.

Many of us could be scammed in small ways throughout our lives but never know it. The used car you bought, the school degree that would help you get a job, or even the expensive perfume that makes you feel sexy. Small scams, big scams. Or maybe their not scams? When do the little lies or illusions become scams? When do you realize there’s only air beneath your feet? The promise of a miracle cure, regrowth of hair, discovering the secret to wealth or happiness, these are all things people are desperate for. Some would do anything, pay any amount, sacrifice everything to grasp, but these are mostly scams.

If you must have it, now, don’t forget to breathe. After a few breaths, sit down a moment and ask yourself a few searching questions. What will change for you if you don’t get your miracle cure? And if you do get it, will life become the beach front property you always wanted? Probably not.

I’ve been scammed. Big time scammed. It makes you feel like the most foolish person around. I was ashamed to talk about it. Being robbed at gunpoint would be scary, but willingly handing over your money to someone as a kindness or for love then finding out they lied to you hurts in multiple ways. I felt betrayed. I should have seen it coming. The scam artist did steal something from me and it wasn’t something anyone can replace. My simple trust. I can’t blindly give anymore. I’m skeptical. And I’m actually thankful, because now when I do give I’m giving to another person, but not giving up myself.

Scam artists fooled the guy in the TV show I watched by charades. A hospital gown, bed, and tubes taped to his body along with beeping IV machines fooled him into thinking he was in a hospital. The peeling paint on the walls and bare light bulb looked like the third world country he was expecting. The moment when he peeled the tape back from his IV tubes and saw they were fake was the moment of glory. The scam artist became the scammed. Payback. I know my scammer has gotten his also. He went to prison.